Don't Veto The Palestinian State

Palestinian Authority jefe grande Abbas has tossed down the gauntlet to Barack Obama and the rest of his "foreign policy team."  The PA will seek full membership in the UN as a sovereign state Abbas declared in a highly reported speech to his fellow countrymen.

This move seems to be a very severe defeat for both Israel and the Obama administration.  The Netanyahu ministry has done everything short of declaring war on the PA.  The Obama "team" including the president has not been much more restrained, threatening (or promising, if you prefer) to veto the move when it comes before the Security Council for action.

A veto would not be looked at with favor in the Arab states generally as was made palpably clear in a recent op-ed piece in the WaPo by one of those interminable Saudi princes and diplomatic heavyweights.  Participants in outdoor sports favored by the "Arab Street" such as riots and suicide bombings will be much less restrained in their disapprobation.

Advocates of realpolitik have noted that even admission to the UN either as a state or a state observer will change nothing for the better on the ground.  There is much to justify this view.  Likewise there is much to support the dystopian notions that the Palestinians will  use either state observer or state status to cause a world of hurt for Israel in the assorted UN sub-agencies and the International Criminal Court.

The pessimistic interpretations do not, however, merit the US using its veto power in the Security Council.  Doing such would only assure the PA would take its petition to the General Assembly in search of the consolation prize of state observer status, which would give it all the trouble making possibilities along with assuring a very large can would be tied to Uncle Sam's tail.

A far better course of action for the Obama administration to take is that of delay.  The process established for seeking recognition as a state by the UN provides an almost infinite mechanism of creative stalling.  The formal request must first go to the Secretary General.  The Secretary General does not have to handle the matter instantly but can request further information before forwarding the request to the Security Council.  Doing this can take weeks--or months.

The Security Council can also demand more information as well as proof that the proposed Palestinian state meets all the diplomatic requirements for state status.  This means the Council can find itself caught in a set of hearings and debates over the degree to which the Palestinian Authority and the territory under its purported control does in fact constitute a fully functioning state.  Given the deep and growing divide between the West Bank based Palestinian Authority and its rival in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, and the fiction that Palestine constitutes a single entity, this could lead to a number of second thoughts within chanceries seemingly committed to the idea of Palestinian statehood.

A full fledged inquiry and debate within the Security Council could even have the potential to undercut any move in the General Assembly for state observer status.  This is not a nontrivial benefit given the uncertainty and ambiguity extant within the European Union for this gambit.  The US might even enlist the cooperation of Russia in seeking a complete airing of whether or not the Palestinian state really exists by quietly noting that any approval by either the Security Council or the General Assembly would constitute a bad precedent from the Kremlin's point of view considering the current ethnic and religious unrest in the Northern Caucasus.  The name, "Tibet," whispered in certain ears might elicit a reasonably favorable response from Beijing.

The point is the US could lobby effectively for a prolonged inquiry by the Security Council, which would buy that most precious of commodities--time--for bilateral diplomacy to make another run at the moribund "peace process" between Israel and the PA.  Abbas would have his political posterior covered enough to keep him in his tenuous position for some while since he would have delivered on his promises and cannot be held personally responsible for UN protocol.

Sure there would still be some riots, some bombings, some threats of worse from the "Arab Street" and other usual Muslim suspects such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, but what else is to be expected?  The US would be spared the major problems which exercise of the veto would bring.

The Israelis, or at least some of them, would not be thrilled but, again, what else would you expect?  A delay might allow calmer heads (assuming there are any) around Netanyahu to provide sound counsel respecting the recommencement of talks with Abbas and company.  There is even the faint prospect that the Obama administration might find the right magic to convince Netanyahu to wake up to the new and alarming political realities in his neighborhood, realities which cannot be addressed by simple words and the implied threat of Israeli military displeasure.

A delay would benefit all interested parties.  A veto would not.  It looks like a no-brainer.  Of course, being the simplest and safest way to go means it is not acceptable to either the Deep Thinkers or the ideologues who populate too much of the foreign policy world, not only here but everywhere.

Down With The Nation-State!

The end of the cold war was marked by more than merely the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact "empire."  The unfreezing of the bipolar icecap which had put a heavy and quite repressive hand on global politics as well as the internal politics of the component parts of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact subordinates started a series of escalating attacks upon the nation-state generally.  After centuries of unquestioned dominance as the basic unit of international relations, the seemingly eternal nation-state was under threat on two fronts.

One axis of attack was both predictable and fully expected by observers of global affairs: the internationalists, particularly those of the Western European and American elite.  Some sang the praises of supra-national organizations both regional and global.  Others gave one shout-out after another on behalf of transnational business entities.  Both groups damned the narrow, parochial focus of the nation-state with its preoccupation concerning national and strategic interests.

With far more joy than sorrow, infinitely greater anticipation than regret, members of the several elites drawn from both the Left and the Right consigned the nation-state to the status of museum curio while anticipating that the new age of globalization and supra-national organizations would mean a better future for all people everywhere.  Abandoning the nation-state for new, bigger, better forms of organization would, it was repeated, usher in a world of peace and plenty, of prosperity and environmental purity.

Slightly less than ten years ago, the presumably unilateral George W. Bush did his not inconsiderable bit to further the cause of the supra-nationalist camp.  Far from being a robust adherent of the go-it-alone school of international relations, George W. Bush showed himself to be squarely in the middle of the American version of multilateralism.

It would have been politically and diplomatically possible, arguably even preferable, to have declined the offer of assistance given by NATO in the wake of 9/11 and dealt with Afghanistan, Taliban, and al-Qaeda with purely American means.  The later seeking of a UN figleaf to cover the policy genitalia of the Bush/Cheney administration with respect to regime change in Iraq did the US no useful service while holding the American effort ultimately hostage to the views, policies, and politics of other countries.

By seeking the support and agreement of supra-national organizations, the Bush/Cheney administration stood solidly in the diplomatic tradition of Harry Truman and LBJ far more than in the footsteps of his father who relied on a US constructed ad hoc coalition when he went to war a decade earlier.  By so doing, the allegedly unilateralist George W. acted to lessen the future freedom of the US to act as a fully sovereign nation-state.

George W. Bush shared the common view of the American and Western European elites that the nation-state should be lessened in the exercise of untrammeled sovereignty.  Regardless of his sometimes less than temperate rhetoric, this President Bush had a faith in the ability of supra-national institutions to restrain the nation-state from pursuing its national interest regardless of the costs imposed on others.  He was also a deep believer in the capacity of transnational business to increase stability and real wealth.  In essence, he stood on the Right but leaned to the Left.

Over the past decade the view of the nation-state as being an obstacle to creating solutions to global problems has grown greatly.  Whether the problem at hand is one of keeping the peace, protecting the environment, creating greater economic stability, assuring access to food and clean water, providing employment and fairly distributing wealth, or assuring human rights, the default position has been to seek the proper supra-national organization, public, or private.

During the past decade, the UN has constantly sought to extend its reach.  Along with its subordinate agencies, the UN has looked for ways by which it can intervene in the domestic affairs of member states.  There have always been good intentions in play: protecting refugees, protecting civilians against repressive acts by their governments, assuring human rights.  Typified by the convention based on the doctrine termed "responsibility to protect," the UN's reach has far extended beyond its practical grasp.

In the years since the end of the cold war, there has been a proliferation of defensive insurgencies by ethnic and religious communities chaffing under the governance of majorities coming from different groups or beliefs. What has been observed ever since the blood letting in the wreckage of the artificial nation-state once called "Yugoslavia" has been a real world application of the self-determination of nations, a doctrine first given form by Woodrow Wilson nearly a century ago.

From Kosovo to the Northern Caucasus to Darfur and South Sudan, defensive insurgencies (aka separatist movements) have resulted not only in massive loss of life and even more massive refugee streams but military interventions or the calls for such interventions.  In all cases the calls have been directed to and answered by supra-national organizations ranging from the UN to NATO to the African Union.  There is no indication that the trajectory of defensive insurgency has reached its apogee yet.  This means there will be more demands for more international intervention in the future.

In recent months, offensive insurgencies (revolutions) have joined with the defensive sort as a very popular pastime.  This has resulted in one more outpouring of demands for outside intervention by the "international community."  The demand has been answered in Libya by a combination of three supra-national organizations, the Arab League, the UN and NATO.  Similar demands with regard to Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria have yet gone unanswered.

The single greatest reason the latter three states have been given a "pass" and left unmolested by missiles and bombs delivered by aircraft operated by governments responsive to the doctrine of R2P is the existence of two countries which do not share the negative view of the nation-state so prevalent in the West.  These two countries are Russia and China.  Neither accept the proposition that the nation-state is either evil or obsolete (or both.)  Neither go along with the belief that countries have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another if given the OK by the UN or some other supra-national organization.

But all the foot dragging on well-intended, forceful interventions is not confined to the Boys in the Kremlin or the Trolls of Beijing.  Nor are the Boys and the Trolls the only people who reject the negative view of the nation-state.  In a delightful irony the views put forth in the Kremlin and the Forbidden City are shared by the common folk, the hoi polloi in both the US and the countries of Western Europe.  Blinded by an arrogant certainty in the correctness of their own multilateral, multinational, multicultural beliefs, the political, media, and academic elites of the US and Western Europe do not understand that their view of the nation-state is rejected completely by their own fellow citizens.

As recent elections in Europe have shown, there is a strong rejectionist current running among the European citizenry.  "Populist" right wing parties have done very very well at the polls in large part due to their rejection of the primacy of supra-national organizations.  While not yet tested in an election in the US, there are strong hints that We the People are not ready to embrace the notion that American sovereignty should be ceded in part to supra-national organizations.

The number of challenges to the nation-state by defensive insurgencies will probably continue to grow in the nest few years.  It is also to be expected that there will be an ever increasing call for international intervention not only in the case of defensive insurgencies but also under the doctrine of R2P.  At least some of these demands will be answered by one supra-national organization or another.  Even if the UN Security Council does not heed the call due to the ever present Russian or Chinese veto, some other entity will pick up the slack.

Even in the event no structured supra-national organization does take responsibility to intervene, one or another of the oft maligned and purportedly obsolete nation-states will do so--if its interests require.  From this it is legitimate to infer that the number of nasty little wars of peace imposition will grow in the years to come.  Practically speaking this means the number of asymmetric wars will grow apace.

Against the backdrop of asymmetrical wars it becomes conceivable, even desirable, for states to use proxy conflicts as an instrument of policy.  This will go beyond the past practice of governments such as the Syrian to use terrorist groups as instruments of state policy.

Not too pretty a scene to contemplate, eh, bucko?  Makes you wish for the good old days of the cold war when affairs might have been risky, but the world was remarkably stable.  Looking ahead, the only thing which gives grounds for thanks is that the elites have been wrong.  Tomorrow more than ever it will be the self-interested nation-state which serves as the bulwark against raging instability and war.

In a world full of candidates for devolution, the only genuine force for stability, peace, and some semblance of prosperity is the self-centered nation-state.  It and not the supra-national organization is and remains the last, best hope of human kind.

It is time the elites and their iconic figures such as President Obama and Secretary Clinton get a grip on that defining reality.  Otherwise, their delusions of a UN inspired heaven on Earth will be the death of us all.

One More Time--UN "Peacekeepers" Can't Keep The Peace

The Geek has been a harsh critic of UN peace keeping operations most of the past thirty or so years.  While there have been some exceptions, the general rule is simply that the blue helmet crowd is not worth a fraction of what it costs the UN, which is to say the American taxpayer.

One more splendid example of the common rule comes from Sudan.  You might recall that after forces from South Sudan ambushed a UN aid convoy protected by units of the Khartoum army, the northerners responded by an attack on the contested border town of Abyei.  The incursion and concomitant looting and burning lasted two days during which thousands of residents hit the dust for points south.  During the festivities, the UN peace keeping force drawn from the army of Zambia hunkered down in its dug in compound, heads between their no doubt quavering knees.

This aspect of the story was widely, one is tempted to write "universally" ignored by the MSM of the world.  An honorable and lonely exception was Reuters Africa whose correspondent investigated this neglect of duty with a fine degree of assiduousness.  The article notes in several places that the UN is both "livid" and is "investigating" the incident.  The Zambian mission to the UN had no comment.  Wow!  What a shock.

This is not the first time that the Zambian contingent has determined that discretion was the better part of valor.  Nor is it likely to be the last.

The Abyei fiasco is typical of UN peace keeping operations in Africa.  In the Congo the blue helmet bunch has been recurrently unable to furnish protection to local civilians besieged, raped, and murdered by one or another of the assorted "rebel" groups.  This has been true even when the UN outpost has been within easy earshot of the rapine.  Nor was the performance of peacekeeping force notably better elsewhere from the Ivory Coast to points east.

The usual reasons given for the under performing nature of the peacekeepers is that they are drawn in the main from the poorest of the poor undeveloped countries.  Thus the personnel are underpaid, undertrained (if trained at all) under equipped (if equipped at all) and very, very poorly officered.  All of this is true.  It is also irrelevant.

There is no explicit requirement that the UN peacekeeping office use forces of this nature.  Rather, these are the only forces generally available.  More developed countries with professional armies seem to be reluctant in the extreme to deploy in the service of humanity.  There are normally valid domestic political imperatives behind this stance.

(Arguably even the presence of a Western professional army is no guarantee of success.  Recall that the small Dutch contingent present at Srebrenica as Ratko Mladic demanded the handover of all Muslim males could not offer resistance, and their request for air support was ineffective as it was submitted on the wrong form.  The result was eight thousand Muslim dead.)

The notion of peacekeeping is flawed in several essential respects.  The first is the requirement that peace already exist--at least in principle--before the blue helmet boys arrive to maintain it.  There is no writ for the UN force to impose peace and then keep it.  The second is the need for the government of the recipient country to request or approve the UN move.  In the context of Sudan the offer of Ethiopia to provide additional peacekeeping troops is contingent upon both Khartoum and Juba signing off on the proposal.  Thirdly, the peacekeeping forces are almost always too small and too lightly armed to intimidate effectively any and all locals inclined to fighting.

The final flaw is the one demonstrated by the Zambians at Abyei.  There is no real stomach for the idea of getting killed in the middle of someone else's war for the abstract of "peace."  This is a very commonsense approach.  It is bad enough to risk one's only skin in a conflict in which one's nation has a direct stake and in which one fights under one's own national command.  It is far less appealing to die for someone else's notions of peace or victory.  For societies and polities barely beyond the tribal stage of abstract loyalties (if that far along the continuum of political abstraction), the desire not to die in a truly meaningless conflict is all the more potent.

For a Zambian or anyone else from any country, there is no inbuilt loyalty to the supreme abstractions expressed in the UN.  Dying under the baby blue banner has no appeal, brings no glory, has no intrinsic reward potential.  When the bullets are flying, the best thing to do is what the Zambians did--dig a deep hole and stay there until the noise ceases.

The lofty thinkers behind the concept of the UN as a peacekeeper in the violent internal affairs of a state and nation which are, at least in theory, sovereign and independent, need to get a grip on the realities as perceived through the eyes of men sent far from home for little material reward to risk themselves in pursuit of something which is utterly meaningless to them.  If the lofty thinking, high minded people at the UN are serious about the notion of armed intervention in the bloody internal politics of a state or establishing an armed presence on the line dividing two combatant states, they need to stop outsourcing the duty to the unfortunate poverty ridden lesser states of the General Assembly--even when these states are eager for the "honor"of doing the dirty work.

Peacekeeping is a form of mercenary warfare.  Period.  This means the forces employed must be heavily armed enough and well disciplined enough to overawe the local combatants.  Overawing means the probability of actual shooting and dying is reduced.  A clear superiority in the task of killing means killing will be less likely.  Beyond that, it means that should the locals not stay properly impressed, the peacekeepers will have the ability to kill without being killed.

This approach would be more expensive to the UN (or the US which is the single largest financial supporter of these missions).  It also means the forces will have to be drawn from the most militarily competent members of the UN, the Great and Near Great Powers.  This, in turn, will open a very large box of political problems for the leaders of these Powers (with the exception of authoritarian regimes--and we all know who these are).  The political problems will in their turn make the Powers a bit more reluctant and circumspect in their handling of interventions under the blue flag.

An increase in reluctance would not be a bad idea.  While the notion and optics of internal violence or border skirmishes with clouds of emotionally appealing refugees is disconcerting, the bitter reality of the utility of both the violence and its consequences must be recognized.  The problems which produced the violence will not be settled by outside intervention, foreign interference.  They may be tamped down, made less visible, but they will still exist to be dealt with by future violence of an increased nature.  All peacekeeping efforts accomplish much of the time is kicking the can down the road.

It would be far better in the long term for the violence to produce a solution to the problem as contrary to the cliche so loved by the lofty thinking sort, violence does settle problems.  History is replete with examples.  It is also filled with examples of how prematurely truncated violence breeds a further outbreak of even bloodier violence.

The world was not produced by Walt Disney.  Nor is the human race given to peace, love, and flower power.  Political and social evolution is often propelled by suffering and dying, by instability and conflict.  The sensitive sort of person might wish it were otherwise, but the dreary history of the human race at least since we left the Eden of hunting and gathering shows the opposite to be the case.  Organized social and political life is characterized by redness of tooth and claw.

Nature is far more gentle and kind creature than is the human.  Get a grip on it.

Becoming A State Isn't Enough To Bring Peace

There is no doubt that the Palestinian Authority (PA) can usher a state called "Palestine" into existence.  There is nothing magical nor even particularly difficult about achieving the status of "state."  Even the longest standing, most broadly accepted basic definition of statehood, The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which dates back to 1933, establishes rather minimal requirements for state status.

The Montevideo Convention provides only four prerequisites.  (1) A permanent population, (2) A defined territory, (3) A government, and (4) The capacity to enter into relations with other states.  In practice these requirements have been further reduced.  As a practical matter, a state can be said to exist when other states say it does.

Even when territorial limits are hazy, poorly defined or still in the process of being determined, an established state has the sovereign right to declare another entity has achieved the same status.  This is also the case when a government is not fully formed, fledged, or functioning.  All that is necessary is that other states recognize the new kid on the block.  The recognition need not be universal.  Nor does the new state need the recognition of any or all of the Great Powers to come into full, legal form.

History is full of examples of states being recognized long before they had achieved either defined borders or a fully functional government.  (Recall that the US falls into this category.)  History is also replete with examples of states and governments which were widely but not universally recognized or lacked recognition and acceptance by one or more of the contemporary Great Powers.  (The US non-recognition of the Bolshevik regime in Russia or that of Mao in China did not make these two states sudden nonentities.)

A state need not be contiguous (pace Constitutional law professor and president Barack Obama) to be both recognized and viable.  At its creation Pakistan consisted of two parts separated by more than a thousand kilometers of India.  It was both recognized and (until the fruits of Punjabi racism and Islamabad's inefficiency matured) viable.  Pakistan existed with its two disparate components because enough other states said it did.

To make it simple but without undue simplification: States come into existence when enough other states recognize its existence and enter into relations with it.  That's all, folks.  There is no need for UN action.  While the General Assembly upon recommendation of the Security Council can extend membership to a new state, this is not required for the state to exist as both independent and sovereign.

All of this brings us back to Palestine.  An increasing number of countries ranging from Brazil to Russia have extended some form of diplomatic recognition to the territory of Palestine as governed by the PA.  As this tide gains force, it can be expected that most of the current membership of the UN will do likewise regardless of the well-intended but quite irrelevant counsel of President Obama.

By the old standards of diplomacy, this should mean that Palestine would come into existence as an independent and sovereign state.  But, the old norms do not apply.  There are two constraints which taken together render the old way inapplicable in this case.  One of these is the Oslo Accords, which formed an agreement between Fatah and Israel.  The PA is not mentioned.  It couldn't be--it did not exist at the time.  Nor was Hamas referenced.  Only Fatah and Israel.

The sundry agreements which fall under the appellation of the frosty Norwegian capital sharply limit the ability of the PA to exercise jurisdiction over territory and persons alike.  The Oslo agreements served to place the Palestinian territory under an ongoing form of Israeli suzerainty.  To a major extent, the effect of the Oslo agreements was to put a diplomatic and political gloss on an underlying brute fact.

The brute fact was (and is) the Israeli occupation.  Even if the territorial extent of full Israeli occupation has been reduced over the years, it still exists as the rock upon which the independence and sovereignty of the PA must founder.

The combination of the Oslo agreement and the fact of ongoing Israeli occupation renders the past experience with the process by which states come into existence nugatory.  This dreary reality is well understood and publicly accepted by PA officials.  They know that even if every country on the face of the globe extends diplomatic recognition, this will not change realities on the ground--as long as the US does not do the same.

Israel's stance in comparison is not central.  There are precedents of states and governments receiving full diplomatic recognition even though they were under full or partial military occupation.  Indeed, that was a key principle underlying the political integrity of governments-in-exile during World War II.  It can be argued that by failing to end its long condemned occupation, Israel has created a Palestinian version of a government-in-exile which has a legitimate claim on the international community for aid in regaining its (temporarily) lost land.

The PA (particularly if Hamas is left out of the picture somehow) has a good case for UN intervention based on both the government-in-exile precedents and international law generally.  Assuming the UN General Assembly took some sort of action equivalent to extending full membership to the PA controlled Palestine, so as to duck any US veto in the Security Council, would it really matter with respect to the larger and more important question--peace?

The short answer is no.  An independent Palestine would still have to deal directly with Israel regarding all the critical matters such as borders, land swaps, an Israeli military presence in the Jordan valley, the status of Jerusalem, and the return of Arab refugees.  These matters would be no less contentious and vexing should Palestine become an independent state than they are right now.

The best which could be asserted about potential benefits to the PA is it would have some additional diplomatic leverage.  As an independent state Palestine could be more effective in opposing additional growth in the Israeli "settlements."  As an independent state Palestine could sign on to the Statute of Rome giving it the right to seek prosecution of purported Israeli war criminals before the International Criminal Court.  This threat would have great leverage in and of itself.

A well coordinated use of mass mobilization of Palestinians in a move on the Israeli Wall and checkpoints along with diplomacy could bring about the desired UN action without US support.  Indeed, it is hard to see how the combination of non-violent mass action and diplomacy could be openly opposed by the Obama administration given the coming of the next election.

The reconciliation between the PA and Hamas has shored up the political base of Abbas.  Now if he and his fellows can show a modicum of smarts in orchestrating global opinion and the photogenic appeal of a series of totally non-violent marches on the Great Wall of (specious) Security behind which Israel cowers, he can pull off the coup of the decade--and mousetrap the Obama "team."

The record of the Palestinians in the theater of global politics and the realities of international diplomacy has more often than not been one of dismal incompetence and self-inflicted defeats.  But, sometimes all it takes is one successful attempt at swinging for the fence.  This time Abbas may do it with the result that Palestine will come into existence.

But, this may well not lead to peace.  And, one cannot expect the Palestinians to make it two-for-two.  That would take Elohim and Allah working in perfect harmony.  Anyone want to make a bet?

Maybe If We Pretend Hard Enough---

Political scientists call it, "let us define our dependent variables," but little kids are more honest.  Politicians call it "nation-building," but little kids are more honest.  The UN calls it "responsibility to protect," but little kids are more honest.

Little kids call it, "Let's pretend."

And here we are today playing let's pretend under all the upscale rubrics mentioned.  We are playing it in the Ivory Coast.  We are playing it in Yemen.  We are playing it in Libya.

In each case our opponent in this great game is called a "strongman," or a "dictator," or, more politely, an "authoritarian ruler."  In each case the venue of this great game is called a "state," or a "nation," or a "country."  In each case we maintain with the straightest of faces that our goal is to "support the people," or "to promote the rights of the citizens," or, most simply, to gain "democracy," or, even simpler and hazier, to seek "reform."

All the terms, all the fine sounding words, all the lofty thoughts behind the words constitute a lie.  Perhaps not an intentional lie, but an untruth nonetheless.  Tergiversation by volitional ignorance covers the situation.

Each of the venues mentioned as well as others such as Sudan or Somalia are not by any realistic understanding "nations," let alone "nation-states."  All are geographical expressions inhabited by assorted tribal peoples of differing, even antipodal, customs, values, norms, and, most important, senses of identification.  Each of the "dictators" is actually nothing more than the accepted leader of one tribe.  None are national leaders for none has a unified nation to lead.

In the Ivory Coast the ousted former president is actually the leader by tacit acceptance if not more active support of the Southern, non-Muslim tribal confederation while the new guy is the tacitly accepted leader of the Northern, Muslim tribal groupings.  In Yemen, the embattled Saleh emerged from the base of support of one tribe and maintained his power by playing off the other tribes against each other.  And, in Libya, Brother Leader is likewise a tribal chieftain whose rivals are from another, far larger tribal assembly located in the far east of the country.

Tribal leaders are not and never will be national politicians as the term is understood in the West.  Nor are the agglutinations of tribes under their authority "nations" as the word is applied in the West.  The absence of national identity means that by definition there can be no nation-state, no truly national polity controlling the instruments of government.

Tribal leaders including the die hard "dictators" of Yemen, Libya, and the Ivory Coast are motivated by deep and powerful considerations such as personal and group honor which have been moribund for many, many generations in the US and the rest of the West.  The tribal leader incarnates in himself not only his personal honor, his personal power, but that of his family, clan, and tribe.  This is at a far cry from the motivators of contemporary Western politicos.  It is even at some distance from the motivators of more typical dictators of the ideological sort, for these may have an inflated sense of self but rarely believe the entire honor, potency, and status of a social group is embodied in their person.

When Gaddafi cried, "I am history!  I am the revolution!  I am Libya!," he was not simply exhibiting what in the West would be considered a psychopathology but stating a ground truth that would have been (and was) understood by tribal leaders around the world.  Gbagbo in his upmarket bunker understood.  So also did Saleh as the vipers on whose heads he danced squirmed and twisted.  Karzai all the way off in Afghanistan understood, despite his status as an "elected" leader.  So also did Maliki in Iraq, again regardless of the special cachet of a Western approved "election."

Tribal leaders, all of whom have "death before dishonor" in an invisible tattoo inscribed across their chests, do not think like Western politicians.  Their calculus of political rationality is completely different.  It would require the resurrection of an American politician such as Andrew Jackson to have an effective translator.  Andy Jackson, like the majority of domestic politicos of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries was a tribal leader in transition.  While focused on developing a nation, these men were emerging from sectional identities equivalent to those of a tribe.

Other countries throughout the West had their own transitional figures,  men part way between the tribal, regional past and the nation-state future.  History demonstrates that the process of congealing a true national identity is one of equal parts time and blood.  War as well as the passage of decades of shared experience and defining mythology is needed to overcome the inertia of the tribal/regional past.  The West has had the time--and more to the point--the spilled blood necessary to forge national identities and politics, to become full fledged nations and nation-states.

Libya and the Ivory Coast had any organic centripetal movement put in stasis by periods of colonization.  And Yemen never emerged from a tribal, feudal dynamic.  (Neither did Afghanistan despite the existence of a monarchy other than brief periods when under external threat.)  The attempt by the well intended statesmen of the West and the diplomats and the bureaucrats of the UN to create actual functioning nation-states from the tribal cloth of the Ivory Coast or Yemen or Libya will be unsuccessful.

It is not a matter of money.  Consider that the EU and France have offered 840 million bucks to the Ivory Coast; that is not mere chump change.  Neither is the vast quantity of American and other peoples' money spent on civilian development and governance programs in Afghanistan.  The sands of Libya will ultimately soak up as much international aid as the wealth of its oil fields produced to date.  None will matter.

Money does not create a state.  Neither do good intentions.  Nor do military interventions.  American and other governments had best realize that in none of these cases as well as others yet to occur will the end product be other than confederations of tribes riven with animosities old and new.  No matter what is done by outsiders, the Ivory Coast, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, or even Iraq will not become genuine nation-states in the near- or mid-term future.

In a very real sense the less that is done by the outsiders under any of the noble terms referenced above, the better the results for the locals.  The less done for the suffering locals, the faster they will have to weld together their own nation by their own blood and sweat.  They will have to do what all of us in the West have done--bring about a national identity and a national polity by passion and suffering over time.

There is no faster way to do it.  And, history shows, no better method.  It seems to be written in our DNA, to suffer is to progress.

Fighting Wars And Building Nations

The Republicans in the House of Representatives are cranked up to cut the American foreign aid budge with a particular emphasis on payments to the UN.  To say the Obama administration and the UN high command are opposed to the idea is to state the obvious.

Today, even as the greatly feared shutdown looms, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was on the Hill making his case for the US not to cut funding to the organization.  He reportedly met with a solid Republican wall of opposition.  Even Ban's statement that he had ordered his "managers" to take a whopping three percent cut in operating budgets gained no traction with the stony faced elephants.  No surprise there, given the willingness of some Republicans to take a much bigger whack out of domestic programs.

By and large it is difficult to justify the enormous amount of money paid over to the UN by the American taxpayer, present and future.  Most of the bucks are provided without any strings or even the pretense of effective oversight and accounting.  Many of the dead presidents are spent to the advantage of countries and programs antithetical to US interests.  More are simply siphoned away in the great morass of inefficiency, graft, corruption, and general misfeasance which has characterized so many UN programs for decades.

The money expended on so-called "peacekeeping" activities is wasted at the least.  Few if any of these actions have protected those most in need.  Few have actually kept peace.  Even fewer have imposed peace where such was the greatest necessity next to oxygen in keeping people alive.  With the general exception of Western forces deployed under blue helmets, many of the UN contingents are best noted for their ability to loot, plunder, rape, and contribute to the atmosphere of fear which permeates all combat zones.

Overall, American contributions to the UN should, like foreign aid programs generally, contribute to the achievement of US national interests and policy goals.  To do otherwise is simply stupid.  The Republicans are correct in historical terms by insisting a direct and material link between foreign aid, including UN payments, and our national and strategic interests.

Of course, it can be difficult to the point of impossibility to determine if any given foreign aid program is actually facilitating US interests.  For example, have the billions of bucks extorted from Uncle Sam by one Pakistani government after another really done much to advance critical American interests in the region?  Or, have the billions of tribute served by nightfall to destabilize the sub-continent, further the growth of the Pakistani nuclear program, and served to multiply the internal frictions of the Pakistani public?

The difficulties attendant upon assessing the benefits of direct, bi-lateral aid are multiplied when considering programs administered by the UN which are partially funded by the US.  The several semi-autonomous or completely independent subsidiary bodies of the UN along with the many programs run under the auspices of the Secretariat serve to further complicate the task of evaluating the diplomatic bang purchased by the taxpayer buck.

This is not to state that the Republican notion of treating the UN as a cafeteria where we would pay for what we approved of or what best served our short-term interests while ignoring the rest constitutes the best or most effective solution to the current problem.  Nor does it imply that an exercise in tying UN reforms to the amount of American funding would improve the situation significantly.

There is, however, a very important reason for the US to keep money flowing to the UN.  The reason allows for the creation of more effective and appropriate means of measuring success--and consistency with larger US national interests and policy goals.  It might even allow for saving money over in the Pentagon budget.

The evaluation of what the UN can do better than the US acting alone or in partnership with a limited number of associated states must start with a ground truth.  This is simply that there is a vast gulf between fighting wars and building nations.

When the US under both George W. Bush and the current administration failed to make the necessary distinction in the Afghan context, the result has been, if not failure, then an incomplete success at best.  As a well presented piece in RCP underscores, the American military services exist to fight wars--not build nations or states.  On the other hand the UN along with relevant regional entities is perfectly situated to engage in the long duration mission of trying to build a functioning nation and, ultimately, nation-state from the rubble of a failed state or a tribal agglutination which never quite reached nation status.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army and Marine Corps have spent entirely too much time, energy, and money on providing governance to the locals.  Rather than concentrating with total intensity on the mission of defeating the enemy, a task which requires some limited excursions into the sphere of governmental services, the ground combat forces have been tasked with addressing the full ambit of governance needs and aspirations until the indigenous regime has been able to take over.

The diversion of effort along with the inevitable frustrations when the foreigners could not provide all that the locals might wish for have crippled the war fighting effort severely.  From the moment the very first American boot hit the ground in Afghanistan (or Iraq) the tasks of governing, of providing essential services other than physical security, should have devolved on some agency other than the US military.  Whether this agency should have been part of the US State Department acting solo or the US acting in tandem with a coalition is open to debate.  What is not open to debate is the requirement for an entity outside the Pentagon to undertake the manifold tasks of nation-building.

The Republicans would be very well advised to stop and think about just how the UN could participate or even take the lead in the nation-building tasks of today and into the future.  That the endless chore of building or rebuilding states will be with us for a long time to come is as evident as the headlines from Libya or the Ivory Coast or Yemen.

There is an ironic symmetry in the idea of the UN being the lead agency in global nation-building missions.  It is rather like placing an impossible task in front of an entity which can do very little, if anything, well or quickly.  But, the record of attempts at building nations by outside actors hints at the probability of a bungling, slow moving, and contradiction riddled agency such as the UN being more successful at the task than would be a fast acting, take-charge-and-move-out model of efficiency.

Military forces are intended to move fast, strike hard, to kill people and break things with minimum losses to themselves.  The UN and other international agencies along with NGOs are infinitely better suited to the long term and often futile jobs such as trying to build a functioning nation-state from unpromising materials.  It would be in the best interests of the US--and the Republicans--to understand this and provide the necessary support to the UN and others.

In a similar calculus, the use of money in bi-lateral aid with the intent of keeping a nation-state viable is a lot cheaper in both treasure and lives than waiting for implosion and its consequences.  It is also far preferable to spend foreign aid dollars in the effort to keep a moderate Muslim state intact and developing than it is to wait for the advocates of violent political Islam to make their play for power.  To update an ancient cliche: A few millions of bucks worth of prevention is far better than billions of bucks of cure.

This orientation--prevention of instability or hostility by promoting development in a moderate political context--implies that at least some of the more chest-thumping Republicans would be very well advised to rethink the emphasis on foreign military aid as opposed to money spent on civilian projects.  It is hard to see where any military aid expended since the end of the Cold War has furthered American interests and accomplished meaningful policy goals.

The same may be said of some of the very big ticket items in the category of development assistance.  All too often the US aid dollars have gone to glitzy projects much beloved of the recipient regime's elite but of no utility to the average citizen.  At the same time major benefits may have accrued to American businesses but few have gone to the local hoi polloi.

This dreary but all too accurate picture implies that the best use of American foreign aid money is to be found either in regional development efforts or in small scale but carefully targeted projects which can be sustained by the locals and will directly and obviously benefit the same locals.  This sort of project is never big ticket and lacks glitz and glamor.  It does have the upside of actually advancing the overarching American interest in stability and evolution in the recipient society and its polity.

Stable and predictable evolution in an economy, a society, and its polity means the probability of either state failure or the takeover of the state by an extreme ideology is minimal to nonexistent.  That, in turn, means wars which will remain unfought, interventions that will be forever unnecessary, and exercises in nation-rebuilding which will never occur.  Whether undertaken bi-laterally or through a regional organization or even by the UN, this approach would mean that over the long-term, the US saves money and accomplishes interest based policy goals.

And, that, bucko, is far better than the Nancy Reagan alternative--"Just say no," currently espoused by the House Republicans.  It is also far better than the Obama administration's approach of, "Shut up and give over the money."

The Nuttiness Race--Terry Jones vs Muslims

The Geek is probably not alone in pining after the good old days of the Cold War.  Sure, it was scary, even very scary on rare occasions such as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It could even be bloody, the usually well-mannered Cold War did have its moments of heat, usually on the periphery and normally limited in duration.  The US involvement in the Wars of the Vietnamese and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were aberrations, not the norm.

The Cold War was also expensive.  Nuclear weapons and their evermore elaborate delivery systems did not come from the defense department equivalent of the Kindle Store. Nor did the elaborate, manpower extensive "conventional" forces come with a steeply discounted price tag.

Yet, there were a couple of paramount features which serve to distinguish the Cold War from the more recent "clash of civilizations."

First and foremost, the two major belligerents of the Cold War decades were conservative, rational actors.  Even the new kid on the Cold War block, China, was cautious and conservative in its international gambits.  The fact that the champions of both the "Imperialist Camp" and the "Communist Bloc" were cautious and risk averse assured that even the less controllable client states were kept on a short enough leash.  Proxy wars and sponsored pseudo-insurgencies as well as the direct duel between "wars of national liberation" and "counterinsurgency" were kept firmly under the control of the two Great Powers.  Vertical escalation across the nuclear threshold was to be prevented no matter what the short-term cost might be.

Both the Kremlin and the Denizens Inside the Beltway shared the same calculus of rationality.  Neither leadership echelon was even slightly interested in committing suicide.  Thus, no matter how frosty the winds might be, the Soviet Union and the US had a deep coinciding national interest--staying alive.  This coinciding interest provided a firm basis for agreements more or less honored by each side, which served to lower the potential of a globe destroying conflict.  Insults, taunts, and challenges might be hurled with reckless abandon provided only that the missiles stayed safely in their silos.

Conservatism, caution, risk aversion, rationality, a shared common value or two, all were defining and all too often under appreciated features of the Cold War.  Today, those terms cannot be applied with honesty or accuracy to the opponents of the US and other civilized states.  The advocates of violent political Islam as well as their numerous adherents can lay no claim to rationality, to caution, to being averse to risk, to sharing with those in the West an appreciation of life.

This is not to imply that all Westerners, all Americans, are paragons of rationality and the other defining features of the Cold War.  There are plenty of individuals in the US and elsewhere in the West who are quite irrational, given to fits of risky recklessness, and even bereft of a strong desire not to commit suicide.  But, the operative word here is, "individual."

In this context, consider the Reverend Terry Jones of the microscopic but grandly named Dove World Outreach Center in Florida.  The Reverend having backed away from last fall's intended "Burn-a-Koran-Day" following personal appeals from Messrs Obama, Gates, and Petraeus, got on with the incendiary job a few days ago.  Following a "trial" in which the defendant Koran was found guilty of being icky-poo, an associate of Jones lit up the accelerant soaked book.  It burned.  Yawn.

The exercise in controlled combustion was by and large ignored by the American media both conventional and new.  Ditto in Europe.  It was as it deserved to be, a non-event.

The Reverend Mr Jones proved his point.  He demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Reverend Mr Jones was a publicity hungry nut job.  That was it.  Nothing more; nothing less.

But as a direct and ever so easily foreseen consequence, Mr Jones' act proved something else: In mass, Muslims, especially Afghan Muslims, can be even greater, far more destructive, far more lethal nut jobs than the Florida pastor.  Lashed on by the sermons of a trio of clerics, a mob of umpteen thousand Afghan men took to the street in a usually calm town of Mazar-i-Sharif and, finding no Americans conveniently at hand, attacked the UN mission compound killing ten.

The national police made some effort to stop the crowd by firing in the air.  But, this was stopped when the commanders on the scene decided the shots only infuriated the mob making the situation worse.  That appreciation was probably accurate.

The lethal rage was accompanied by all the usual signs of Muslim disaffection--cries of "Death to---" and "Down with---."  And, the action in the street was joined by more official acts.  Elected parliamentarians in Afghanistan have demanded that the US government prosecute Mr Jones without delay and with the utmost of severity.  In less time than it takes the average copy of the Koran to burn, mobs assembled in cities far removed from Mazar-i-Sharif making the same denunciations and demands.  From Kandahar to Kabul and finally to Islamabad, the mobs were out in force.  Without exception the "angry young men" (to use a favorite MSM term) called for swift, condign punishment of the "blasphemer."

One angry man after another patiently explained to the assorted Western reporters that the burning of the Koran by Jones constituted an insult to all Muslims which could only be offset by spilling the man's blood.  To the Muslim making the explanation the matter was straight forward, it was a matter of duty.  Specifically the duty every Muslim has to punish any and all insults to his faith, its sacred writings, and its prophet.

Duty.  That is the key word.  It is the word and concept which underpins the deadly outbreak in Mazar-i-Sharif

The notion of duty is powerful in the West.  It is part and parcel of the institutions which define the US.  But, in the West, in the US, duty arises from the rights with which all are endowed.  Rights demand an equivalent duty.  The concept of rights and duties with the first preceding the second is so universal in the West that it even fully penetrated the Soviet Union providing an essential component of the shared values which allowed agreement even in the darkest days of very real global competition.

The Muslims in Mazar-i-Sharif were acting on a concept of universal duty without modification by rights.  The same applies to those Muslims who strap on suicide vests or those who stone women or those who lop off the body parts of purported thieves.  Duty is all in Islam.  All must bow in abject submission to the duties imposed upon them by the divinity which created all.

The focus on duty, the obligation of the Muslim to perform each and every duty with the perfect submission of the ideal slave assures there can be no meaningful discussion of rights between Westerners and Muslims.  There can be no understanding on the part of the Muslim bound up in a universe of universal duties that the Reverend Jones has a right to be a nut job.  That the Reverend has a right to communicate his views regarding the moral worth of the Koran by burning it.  That the US government has neither the right nor the duty to punish Terry Jones for exercising his rights of inflammatory communication.

The advocates of violent political Islam (and its non-violent cousin) as well as their adherents have a calculus of rationality.  It is based on duty, a spacious understanding of duty which places all under extraordinary obligations.  This calculus of rationality is totally antipodal to the Western one which is predicated on rights.

There is no point of coincidence between the Muslim ideal of duty and the Western one of rights.  There can be only conflict.  Not even the realty that Western ideas of rights demand mediation by companion duties alters this dismal intellectual conflict.  There is no capacious concept of rights extant in Islamic societies generally.  Within the social groups most affected by political Islam there is only one right which obtains to any and all people.  That is the right to be a dutiful slave of the deity.

Once an individual has exercised this one "right," there exists only a universe of duties.  Importantly, the duty owed by the submissive slave of the deity is announced not by the deity but by a cleric.  When the cleric states it is the duty of the believer to force the US to prosecute Mr Jones, then it is both lawful and required for the believer to run amok at the utterly innocent UN compound.  When the cleric states it is the duty of the believer to stone an adulteress, the submissive slave of the deity must pick up a rock and throw it with homicidal intent.

The roster of duties is literally without end.  The number of clerics who are willing to tell the crowd where duty resides is almost as limitless.  So, the potential for conflict extends into the future as far as one cares to look.

Unlike the good old days of the Cold War, today's "Clash of Civilizations" is absolute and typically irrational.  The opposition of duty defined as totalistically as is done by some Muslims with the Western concept of individual rights is total and absolute.  As the duties imposed by Islam are those of the slave obedient to the master and the master's driver are without limit, they cannot be inherently limited to the universe of the rational.

So, join with the Geek in yearning for the days of the Cold War--at least the motives and goals of the opponents were rational and understandable.  And, so they could be opposed with consistency and effectiveness.  The good old days?  You betcha!

Another Case Where Hanging Tough Pays Off

The Big Two of Successful Defiance Of The International Community, Iran and North Korea, have been joined by another practitioner of cocking a snoot at Great Powers and international organizations, the Ivory Coast.  To err on the side of accuracy it is not the country which is flipping the bird at the assorted powers and both the UN and African Union but rather an aging dictator who maintains he did not lose the election which all the others insist he did.  Laurent Gbagbo has been the Man In Charge for a decade or so and intends to keep on doing so no matter what the AU, UN, or assorted others might say.

The situation in the Ivory Coast with Gbagbo, his army, and his militias holding on to power while confining the properly elected new president, Alassane Ouattara, prisoner in a luxury beachfront hotel and forcibly searching the vehicles of the UN peacekeeping force should be a form of comic relief, theater of the absurd.  It is not.  The standoff in Abidjan is no laughing matter because of its possible even probable impact on the twenty countries in Africa which have elections scheduled for this year.

Africa has never shown itself to be overly hospitable to democracy, at least any form of the often altered beast which would be generally recognizable as an open expression of popular will in the choosing of governmental leaders.  The combination of historical, demographic, social, and economic features which typify much of the continent provide very thin soil for democracy of the sort common in Europe or North America.  Rather the environment has proven nourishing to the ambitions and agendas of autocrats, strongmen, the makers of coups and thieves of elections.

If Gbagbo is allowed to get away with his effort to hold on to power, the probability is that democracy will become even more of an endangered species than it has been.  The US, France, the UK, the EU, and the UN have all imposed sanctions and flexed diplomatic jaw muscles.  The regional organization, ECOWAS, as well as the African Union have also imposed financial and economic sanctions in addition to sending diplomatic missions almost by the score.

So far all the diplomatic palaver and sanctions have had no useful effect.  Even the cutting off of governmental access to governmental funds on deposit with the regional central bank did not claw Gbagbo's grasping fingers from the levers of power,  If anything, all the talk, all the sanctions, all the implied threats, all the offered inducements have done nothing but enhance Gbagbo's intransigence.  In connection with this it might be recalled that Gbagbo did something even Vladimir Putin or Hu Jintao would not contemplate--he refused to accept phone calls from President Obama.

When the UN Security Council sent a message by authorizing an increase in the UN peacekeeping force in the Ivory Coast by two thousand men, Gbagbo demonstrated just how scared he was by ordering his troops to stop and inspect UN vehicles.  In a quick and unmistakable way, the incumbent ex-president showed his contempt for the "international community" as he had some weeks earlier blown off Mr Obama.  With the nerve of a World Series of Poker champion, Gbagbo has called every bluff.

The Western countries, even France whose flag once flew over the Ivory Coast, have washed their collective hands of the situation.  After all, chocolate is nice but it is hardly a strategic material.  The UN has made all the right motions but lacks both the capacity and political will to actually do something.  ECIWAS has shot its wad.

This means the decision making and execution ball is firmly in the African Union's court.  This is as it should be.  The fifty-three member bloc has the most at stake in the Affair Of The Tenacious President.  It also has the capacity to employ effective coercion to achieve its policy goals--should such be defined with a degree of specificity.

Many of the AU's member states are functioning but fragile democracies.  It would seem as a result that the AU should operate without delay using all appropriate means to assure that democracy is not put in further peril by Gbagbo's refusal to accept the verdict of the polls.  Anyone who has followed the developing situation in the Ivory Coast must have long realized that this is a case where only the credible threat of force would serve to reinforce less robust mechanisms of coercive diplomacy.

Unfortunately, the AU is badly divided on how to accomplish a broadly accepted aim--the removal of Gbagbo.  Nigeria has called for the use of military force.  South Africa favors more mediation.  Anglola has beat the drum for new elections.  Other member states have aligned behind one or another of these countries.

If there is a consensus, it is against the use of the "military option."  Although arguments against an AU adventure in regime change are usually couched in terms of humanitarian considerations, the subtext is far more realistic.  Many Africa states are of the view that their military forces are not up to the task.  Others fear the unmentionable: Deployment of the army or any sizable contingent would open the domestic door to coup plotters or self-styled revolutionaries.

There is a great deal of rationality to each of these considerations.  Most AU member states possess armies which are internal security oriented.  Few AU national forces assigned to UN peacekeeping missions have demonstrated the necessary levels of professional competence to mount an invasion which is carefully constrained in lethality and destructiveness.  Taking out a regime which enjoys rightly or not a sizable degree of support without leaving behind a failed state would be very difficult for even the best trained and officered military.

A mission of this degree of difficulty is lightyears beyond the competence of any AU member state's military.  This means the AU does not have the credible capacity to coerce Gbagbo from office.  Importantly, both the AU leadership and Gbagbo know this.

The dreary conclusion of this is simple.  Absent a diplomatic miracle which would tax the devious skills of a Talleyrand, Gbagbo will stay in the presidential palace and his rival will remain penned up in the hotel.  This, in turn, implies that democracy in Africa takes one more bullet in the back of the neck.

Let's hear it one more time for the triumphant march of democracy.  Well, it does sound nice, doesn't it?  If it weren't for reality...

Why Not Cut Off The UN?

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has thrown down the gauntlet.  Well, actually she has tossed several gloves down, but this particular challenge is aimed directly at the bete noir of conservatives, the United Nations.  The one time minister of foreign affairs in the Republic of Korea, Ban Ki-moon, has vowed to meet the challenge in person.  He will appear in the course of hearings scheduled to start later this month.

Ms Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American representing a district in South Florida, has made her distaste for the UN abundantly clear.  She considers the organization, particularly the Secretariat, to be corrupt, inefficient, lacking in transparency, deficient in honesty, and generally speaking unworthy of the lavish support it receives from the American taxpayer (and his Chinese lenders.)  She has recommended making contributions to the world body purely voluntary as a means of persuading the outfit to clean up its act.

Such a move would cut the UN off at the knees.  Currently the US provides 517 megabucks of the UN's 2.17 gigabuck operating budget.  In addition the US forks over 2.68 billion of the organization's 9.67 billion dollar peacekeeping costs.  That constitutes a whole lot of something for not too terribly much of a return.

Not surprisingly, Secretary General Ban is not in agreement.  While he is more or less willing to admit rather grudgingly that there may have been some problems in the UN during the past, he claims he has made great strides in assuring efficiency, transparency, and an absence of corruption during his tenure to date.  In any event, he seems to say, what alternative is there?

Beyond that cop out defense, Mr Ban appears to think that the only problem the UN has is one of image.  Not unlike the Democratic party following the midterm election, Mr Ban hints at the UN having failed to properly address its "messaging" difficulties.  If only the American public and its (Republican) representatives understood just how well the UN is handling its manifold tasks, there would be no argument over the notion that We the People were getting a very good return on our investment.

Unfortunately the problem is not as simple as Mr Ban believes.  Nor is it simply a matter of UN management. If that had been the case, the 1999 Helms-Biden United Nations Reform Act would have been sufficient to meet American objections and questions.  The problems of UN performance are far more extensive, totally systemic, and in largest measure are the consequence of the organization having been afflicted with a bad case of institutional overreach.

The UN has long strayed from its basic mission, the foundational reason for its creation.  That initial mission was simple to state but very difficult to put into practice.  The purpose of the UN was to preserve international peace by assuring that those countries which broke the peace would suffer severe and immediate punishment by the "international community."  In principle, a state which broke the international peace by unprovoked aggression would face the united effort of member states to restore the status quo ante bellum.

The realities of international politics as expressed in the Security Council made certain that the UN could not address its major mission more than a couple of times--the Korean War and the repulse of Iraq from Kuwait forty years later.  Between the influence of the Cold War on Security Council votes and the many ways in which a state could plausibly present aggressive war as one of a legally defensive nature, the UN failed the hopes of its creators.

In part because of its manifest failure as an instrument of collective security but also as a consequence of the great expansion of its membership during the post-colonial decades, the UN cast about for additional missions.  By feats of (mis)definition, the body concluded that it possessed the authority to intervene in the internal affairs of a member state if that state undertook measures which stimulated a flux of refugees to neighboring countries which threatened instability in those states.  Similarly, the UN determined that it could intervene to address or prevent humanitarian crises contingent upon the collapse of a state or actions by a government which put lives at undue risk.

While the General Assembly, Security Council, and Secretariat were engaged in mission leap, so also were the assorted subsidiary entities operating under the collective UN mantle.  This gave rise to such abominations as the International Panel on Climate Change as well as the aggressive outreach by such bodies as the World Health Organization and the supreme abomination of the Human Rights Council.  Each of these bodies has attempted with more or less success to intrude on affairs formerly seen as the sole bailiwick of sovereign states.

The proliferation of "peacekeeping" missions along with "humanitarian" operations further emphasized the intrusive and expansionist nature of the UN--to say nothing of its increased demands for money.  The result, a consequence not likely to have been intended, was to make the UN appear to have delusions of becoming the very thing denizens of the far, far Right warned against a half century ago--a pretender to world government status.

Leaving aside the philosophical merits of a One World Government, the brute fact remains that the UN is not equipped in any respect to fill that function.  The nature of the Security Council with its Conference of the Victors veto holders as well as the General Assembly with its every country has one vote assure that the UN lacks both the capacity and the perceived legitimacy to operate as even the vaguest sort of super-national government.

What Mr Ban must address--and what Ms Ros-Lehtinen objects to--is the pretense by the UN that it is by right a form of super-national governing body even if not a super-national government per se.  The task for Mr Ban is simply impossible.  There is too wide a perception that the UN has delusions of governmental aspirations for him to counter in a single appearance or even several.

A close reading of the UN record in peacekeeping shows a record which comes far closer to failure than to success.  In the Congo as elsewhere the UN blue helmets have demonstrated a lack of capacity and will to impose or keep the peace which serves to erode the credibility of peacekeeping fatally.  Many of the national contingents assigned to UN duty are poorly trained, poorly equipped, lacking in basic discipline, bereft of effective officers, and overly given to gangster as opposed to military virtues.  That the US should be paying for this is insupportable.

The record in humanitarian operations is not much better.  Haiti is a fine example of how poorly the UN is equipped for major rescue and rehabilitation efforts.  The response to the cyclone in Burma may have been impaired by the local government's intransigence but was still marked by ineptitude at best and flat out blundering at worst.

Mr Ban may be proud of the UN's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan but there is precious little objective support for this pride.  Domestic political pressures may have forced George W. Bush to relent on his anti-UN stance following the Iraq invasion, but this should not be mistaken as an acknowledgement that the UN was well equipped to do anything meaningful either in Iraq or Afghanistan.  The same applies to Sudan.  American and European diplomacy rather than UN efforts brought about the secession vote in Southern Sudan and have at least limited the Khartoum government's brutal actions in Darfur.

The UN has done nothing to enhance its perceived legitimacy with the ever greater profusion of special tribunals charged with investigation and prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  So far, the tribunals seems to have specialized in prosecuting former African dictators and the war lords of former Yugoslavia.  It is not surprising that a belief has grown in Africa to the effect that the tribunals are simply one more neo-colonial apparatus intended to keep Africans in their collective place. The indictment of the current Sudanese president has forced the notion to spread from Africa to portions of the Muslim world.  And, this aspect of UN overreach is bound to get worse no matter which course of action the pre-trial judge in the Lebanese matter goes.

With the exception of those Americans who have an agenda such as the environmental activists and their global warming fellow travelers, or those of the hard Left belonging to the "blame America first" school of thought, there is not much support within We the People for the UN.  This translates into a lack of support for feeding the UN's expensive habits.

At a time when budgetary realities are dismal at best, at a time when the US must cut its defense expenditures regardless of the war in progress, the ongoing threat of violent political Islam, the growth of Chinese ambitions and the military means to support those ambitions, there is very little stomach in the US for largess directed to the lame, anti-American bunch which constitutes the ambition heavy, accomplishment light group called the United Nations.  The correlation of forces runs against Mr Ban and runs for those like Ms Ros-Lehtinen who desire an end to American underwriting of the UN.

Tinkering on the margins of the UN will not solve the problem.  The UN as currently constituted is the problem.  The world may benefit from a credible instrument of collective security, but the UN as it exists today is not that instrument.

Pace President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and others of their ilk, get a grip on reality.  The UN as it exists now is not useful.  It is not useful as a means of preventing or punishing international aggression.  It is not useful as a means of protecting human rights.  It is not competent in the protection of the environment.  It is not even a worthy mechanism of American foreign policy.

At best the UN is a charade.  At worst it is a fraud perpetrated upon people eager for a genuine means of keeping the international peace or addressing the very real problems of the global commons.  Today, in large measure because of its nature and character, the UN is as toothless and worthless as was the League of Nations in 1939.  Like the League it has outlived its usefulness.  It has become an institution not unlike a fly in amber, a fossil of a long dead time, entombed.

As the US took the point in developing the concept of the UN during the dark days of a war which seemed without end at the time, we must now take the lead in developing a credible replacement for the UN.  This is a far more demanding process than simply seeking to force changes on the margins by playing games with our financial contribution to the discredited Circus by the Hudson.  It will demand deep and realistic thinking, prolonged and perhaps bitter debate, but the results can be worth the effort.

In any event we cannot simply stand by as the great golem of the UN shambles and lurches along on its course to self-inflicted destruction.  Our future and that of the world in which we live demands more and better of us.

As Robert Kennedy was fond of asking, "If not us, who?  If not now, when?"

Special Relationships: Alive And Well? Or Going Down The Tube?

Whether the Obama administration likes the idea or not (or is even aware of it) the US has a number of "special relationships."  Three have been called into question recently.  In no particular order of importance, or specialness, these are: The Granddaddy of 'em all: the UK--the most solid in terms of approval by We the People: Israel--and, the most quiet of relations: Canada.

The relationship between the US and the UK was no doubt harmed by the cavalier treatment extended to the Brits by Mr Obama.  However that damage was low and self-limiting--the two countries need each other too much to stay in a snit over the sheer ineptitude of a president and some of his "team."

More recently the strong, historically rooted special relationship between the "Mother country" and "The Colonies" has been put in a greater degree of very real peril by the upcoming British review of defense requirements.  Due to a ukase from the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence is under irresistible pressure to cut its budget somewhere between twenty and forty percent.  This means simply that the British must view the threats to their security and global interests over the next ten years in terms of the severely constricted budgetary environment currently extant.

The last time HMG attempted to cut the size of the threats to meet the cloth of the Exchequer was during the Thirties.  The Great Depression was real.  So also was the looming threat of expansionist Nazism, Fascism, and Imperial Japan.  The budget driven weakness of the British was a major, arguably, the major, reason forcing the appeasement of Munich and the later set of defeats for British forces around the world.

At that time the US was available (along with the invaded Soviet Union) to provide the necessary wherewithal to contain and ultimately defeat the three aggressors.  That, as they say, is history.

The fallout from the Great Recession has combined with the spendthrift policies of New Labor governments to compel a period of austerity not seen since the grim, grey days following World War II.  The need for fiscal prudence is self-evident.  Not so self-evident is the need or safety of placing a great burden on the defense establishment.

Both Secretary Gates and Secretary Clinton have viewed the potential retrenchment (to be polite) of the British armed services with a fair degree of public alarm.  So also have a number of British senior officers, both active duty and retired.

Stripped to its essentials, any British defense program which is predicated on cutting its active duty ground combat forces to something on the order of eighty thousand will have the effect of making the UK a military nullity in any joint operations approaching even pre-surge Afghanistan.  That unfortunate realty, a reality which will see British deployable battalions at forty percent authorized strength, is not compensated for by the very high quality of British troops.  General Petraeus was not simply being polite and politic when he praised the British operations in Afghanistan; he was being essentially accurate.

Weak battalions remain weak battalions even when the "few" are trigger pullers without equal.  In planning operations, US decision makers must look at quantity as well as quality.  The same is true for their colleagues in the UK when considering force projection missions even on the small scale of the one undertaken in Sierra Leone a few years back.  If a contemplated mission requires X troops backed with Y capacities in artillery, logistics, engineering, air support, and so on, but you only have X- men or Y- capacities, the mission cannot be undertaken with any measure of certainty.

Complicating the situation is the very hard to understand position adopted by the Royal Navy.  The Navy has two aircraft carriers authorized with one under construction presently.  To assure gaining these two large and evidently competent ships, the Navy's senior command is willing to cut their total fleet of surface combatants to roughly twenty-five (about enough to assure adequate defense against air, missile, and submarine threats.)  This would mean the Senior Service would have the same number of warships it did when Henry VIII was chopping off wives' heads.  The complete scuttling of any amphibious warfare capacity would make the Royal Marines redundant--and make it deucedly tough to replicate the Sierra Leone operation let alone the successful retaking of the Falkland Islands.  (The aging fleet of SSBN Trident carrying subs would be retained but on a scale which might render constant one boat deployment impossible.)

It is ironic that if the Navy gets its carrier, it will have to borrow some other country's aircraft to fly from it.  But, the chatter surrounding the forthcoming review hints at a severe shrinking of the RAF.  The famed "few" of seventy years ago will actually be constricted to an aircraft inventory not seen since 1913.  This state of affairs calls into question the capacity of the RAF to support even a miniature expeditionary force.

Asymmetrical homeland threats might be countered in a cost effective way by creative use of the Territorial Forces, but any projection of force to the centers of threat would be well neigh onto impossible unless as part of a coalition.  Of  course it is difficult (but not impossible) to envision the British doing a go-it-alone.  For the US as the most likely coalition partner, the question is what can the new, downsized British armed forces add to our efforts beyond diplomatic cover and concealment.  More bluntly, is it worth the inevitable political complications of coalition warfare to add even a highly proficient but quite pint sized British component?

With that as context, the larger question demands consideration.  If the British military capacity is of very limited diplomatic usage and almost nonexistent warfighting utility, what then exists as a basis for a special relationship?  History is nice.  So also is a legacy of shared values and norms.  Ditto a more or less common language.  But, when the vibram hits the road, the only thing that counts is the muscle behind the words of diplomacy.

In short, if the Incredible Shrinking British Military comes into existence, the US will have to (in the words of John Foster Dulles) undergo an "agonizing reappraisal" of our relation with the UK.  This process will be driven by a primary consideration: The British will need us a lot more than we will need them.  This will not be good for either us or them.  The special relationship has benefited our global diplomacy in the past far more than a mere comparison of relative military strength might appear to merit.  But, there is a point where one party's extreme weakness permanently alters the relation from one of equals to one of patron-client.  The US-UK dyad may soon cross that point.

The special relationship between the US and Israel is often seen as one of patron-client where the client is in charge.  No doubt it looks that way, particularly when the American president leans on the Israeli prime minister without useful result.

The important consideration when examining this particular special relationship is that its existence and parameters are not determined by the president or secretary of state.  Nor are they determined and defined by congress.  No indeed.  The nature and extent of the relations between Israel and the US have been and are determined and defined by We the People.  To an extent not equaled by any other state, We the People have decided that Israel merits unreserved support and assistance.  While the precise percentage of support waxes and wanes over time, there has never been a withdrawing of the commitment made generations ago to the existence and flourishing of the Jewish state.

The government of Israel is perfectly well aware of this.  After all, it was responsible in significant measure for the public relations efforts which have provided a great impetus for this support within We the People.  When Ike blew the whistle on the Anglo-French-Israeli Sinai War in 1956, the reaction of Israel's government was to take action to preclude such an event in the future.  There is nothing wrong nor reprehensible in a state pursuing its national interests through intensive and effective public relations, political actions, and lobbying.

The result is simply that Israel has the capacity to shrug off presidential coercion.  It can ignore arm twisting and veiled threats with impunity.  And has.

Unless and until the Israeli reputation within We the People can be changed or attenuated, the special relation will continue as presidents come and go.

To the north of us is a big country.  It contains people who are very nice, very concerned, people who are quite proud that their country has long been an excellent global citizen.  Beyond that, Canada has been an ally of the US in quite a few wars including the one in Afghanistan.  Because of shared norms, values, and understandings of life, the Canadian government has usually been on the same side of the voting in the UN as the US.

Canada wanted very much to hold a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.  It has already occupied one of the rotating seats six times.  The government mounted a long and hard fought campaign to gain one of the two seats reserved under the UN's geographical apportionment system for European and other Western countries.  It lost.

Despite having 135 written and 15 verbal commitments of support, Canada trailed Germany and Portugal so that, humiliatingly, it dropped out of the contest.  Various explanations for the defeat have been advanced up in the Great White North.  Among them are: Canada alienated Muslim countries by supporting the US and Israel; the US did not go to bat for the Canadians.

Not surprisingly these explanations have come with demands that Canada rethink its foreign policies with a view to putting more blue sky  between it and the Colossus of the South.  While the Canadians are nice, very civilized people, they are also dedicated nationalists.  There is resentment of the US--its domination of the Canadian economy, the appeal of American television, and other matters of even less consequential but quite irritating sort.

With that as context and considering that the US delegation to the UN did not make any real, evident effort to support Canada's bid, it would not be surprising if the Canadian government did not become more "independent" in its conduct of foreign relations.  This will not imply something as radical as the Canadians suddenly supporting the Islamist demands for an ending of free speech on religious matters, but it could indicate a set of subtle and eventually harmful lessening of Canadian understanding on a raft of issues including the growing matter of Arctic sovereignty.

The US and Canada have had more than a few down points in their mutual history--such as our two invasions of the country two and more centuries ago.  But, we share more than a common and still unfortified border, so any unnecessary daylight between us in foreign relations would be more than simply regrettable.  They would be mutually injurious.

We and the Canadians are joined hip and shoulder.  Far more than economics dictates this sometimes uncomfortable truth.  While not talked about as such, our relationship with Canada is uniquely special.  However, the contemporary dynamic is such that we must not take it for granted.  We would be well advised to undertake actions which will reassure the Canadians that we value them greatly.  This will require more than honeyed words and soothing mood music.  It will demand actions.  Perhaps the time is on us to have a more accommodating view of Canadian ambitions in the Arctic or environmental matters.

Special relations exist.  But each is different in its dynamics and requirements for nurture.  With the UK, we must quietly but firmly insist that the British armed forces remain credible.  With Israel it must be acknowledged that presidents do not define the relationship.  For the Canadians it is necessary that we listen effectively and treat with respect.

But, the Obama administration is tone deaf.  So we shouldn't hold our collective breath.

High Minded Morality Hurts People--Again

Omar al-Bashir is a very unpleasant person. He is almost into the Idi Amin category and could, now that the High Minded are helping him, aspire to the status of Pol Pot.

The International Criminal Court is another UN invention intended to please the High Minded and Lofty Thinking types who really, really believe that there is such a critter as enforceable international law. So far the ICC has enjoyed a somewhat paltry catch, thuggish characters from the former Serbian government and a pair of sociopaths from failed African states.

These international felons were at the time of their arrest former heads of state or members of deposed governments. But, now the ICC seeks the heights of issuing an arrest warrant for a sitting head of state. Presumably, after sitting around one of the marijuana selling cafes in Amsterdam, the worthies of the ICC thought that had they only been around in the 1930s the world could have been spared the worst excesses of Adolph Hitler or Joe Stalin both of whom were well known for wholesale internal massacres undertaken for ideological reasons.

The comparison of Omar al-Bashir with two of the three greatest mass slaughterers in history is unfair to the Sudanese. (For ten points name the third.) Still, his notion of effective counterinsurgency seems akin to the notion of creating a desert and calling it peace. And, there seems little doubt that Omar is motivated by ideological considerations.

Al-Bashir is an Islamist. His supporters and corps of executioners are Islamists. His victims in the main are infidels who according to Islamist interpretations of Islam deserve to be sent to hell with all possible dispatch. A small minority of Omar's targets are merely observant Muslims who fail to support his Allah driven agenda of religious and ethnic purification with sufficient ardor.

There is good and sufficient reason to cap Omar with or without due process of law.

But, the reach of the ICC far exceeds its grasp.

As a drearily predictable consequence of this exercise in judicial hubris a lot of people are going to suffer. Suffer greatly. Suffer, in many cases, unto death.

Just how the hell gripless are the members of the ICC? Did these inflated egos really expect that al-Bashir would fly up to Amsterdam and submit to arrest? Go to the nearest Dutch embassy and ask to be handcuffed forthwith?

Omar, the African Union and the Arab League, to say nothing of Sudan's number one trading partner and foreign investment, China, all warned that any issuance of an arrest warrant would be counterproductive. Even relatively moderate Muslim states such as Jordan evidenced support for their embattled coreligionist.

Making support more than mere rhetoric, a Chinese company signed a contract to build roads two days after the ICC demanded al-Bashir's incarceration pending trial. Hello! Is there anybody home at the ICC.

Omar did the expected. Hot on the heels of the warrant, the Sudanese government cancelled the operating licenses of thirteen international aid organisations and booted their collective posteriors out of the country. As an instant riposte the ICC made threats that the humanitarian crisis expected as a consequence might result in yet more charges against the president of Sudan.

Wow! That ought to give old Omar pause for thought. Right. Fer sure, Dudes of the ICC.

Has no one noticed within the Legions of the High Minded that pressure consolidates political will of the target long before it might crush that will? History is replete with examples of that principle. If history is too tough a subject, consider how a snowball is made.

Right. You squeeze loose flakes and they become a ball. Squeeze long and hard enough the once flaky stuff becomes a headbopping iceball.

Get the picture, you of the High Minded?

Now the ICC, Darling of the High Minded, has placed a couple of million Sudanese in harm's way. In case anyone has missed it the refugee camps in the desert lack a few amenities such as water, food, adequate protection from the elements and basic medical care. All of these were provided by the High Minded outfits expelled by al-Bashir.

So, now what?

One possibility is that the UN Security Council will suspend or otherwise overrule the ICC's action. This is the preferred option as it will allow a face saving way for the situation to be defused and the international aid organisations to return to their essential work.

China's position on the Security Council and its critical role not only in Sudan but in relation to other vexing US concerns makes this action viable. That is if the US goes along with it. We have the veto. And, given the predilections of our ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, coupled with President Obama's inability to "even fake an interest in foreign policy" our use of the veto to block any suspension of the warrant is not an impossible outcome.

There is an alternative. Regime change. But, Sudan today is not Panama twenty years ago. It is not even Afghanistan in 2002.

No national leader of any country well oriented as to time and place is going to support in any way, shape or manner an invasion of Sudan. To the probable dismay of Ms Rice and others of a High Minded nature, ousting Omar at the point of a bayonet and frog marching the perp in handcuffs, shackles and disgrace to the Netherlands is a non-starter.

Reality dictates that unless and until a well-placed bullet preferably fired by a gun in Sudanese hands solves the problem the world is stuck with Omar al-Bashir. The best thing to do is cooperate in a Security Council action to suspend or even quash the warrant and get the aid workers back to the job.

The Geek is not to be numbered among the twenty-six percent of Americans who have a favorable view of the UN and its major subsidiaries. He lost all faith in that Utopian outfit when it shifted its mission from maintaining international peace (its original function) to mucking about in the internal matters of member states.

The al-Bashir episode shows one more time that the UN and all its manifold coercive creations such as the ICC should stick to the task of keeping international peace. Anything else invites entrance into morasses in which there is no easy or clean exit. Walking into the internal dynamics of a state--even a thugocracy such as Sudan--hurts the innocent and assures the guilty have a stronger grip on power.

In English We Call It Lying

There is an Arabic word with which everyone should be familiar. The word is taqiyya. It means to dissemble, to fabricate, to evade by artful deception.

In short, it means to lie.

Taqiyya is not only permissible, it is both obligatory and laudable when used to defend Islam or Muslims against non-believers. Lying joins killing on the list of Islam approved behaviors--provided the target is an infidel.

Shia Islam takes taqiyya a step further. As Shia has long been (or at least seen itself as) a persecuted minority within the larger Muslim community, the use of taqiyya against Sunnis is justified by the needs of the faith.

The Geek apologises for being so professorial. The reason for this step-by-step foundation laying will be obvious in just one moment.

Taqiyya is the reason that Iranian protestations of nuclear innocence must raise more than an eyebrow of disbelief. The Tehran assertions must be rejected as the taqiyya they are.

The latest proof, if any is needed that the Iranians are lying through their beards when they say, "All we want is a few nuclear kilowatts," comes from the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, writing in today's International Herald Tribune. (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/24/opinion/edmiliband.php)

Miliband reminds us that the West, specifically the P5+1 (or as he puts it diplomatically, the E3 plus 3) two years ago offered the Iranians a very sweet deal that would have met their expressed desire for nuclear electrical generation capacity while assuring that no bomb would be made as a "byproduct."

The mullahocracy rejected the proposal.

The latest P5+1 offering is a slightly improved version of the one of two years ago. The apparent hope of the diplomats behind the offer was that the economic and social degradation suffered by Iran over the past two years coupled with the promise of more sanctions, more rigorously imposed and enforced, would make the deal more attractive.

The response from all levels of the Tehran regime has been more taqiyya administered with slightly more bluster than before.

Wow! That was sure a hard one to predict.

In case anyone is unclear as to what the P5+1 offered (as some who post on the most "progressive" blog sites apparently are), here is Miliband's (quite accurate and succinct) outline.

Our aim is clear: We simply want to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It is not regime change in Tehran. The new deal is also clear. It includes specific proposals to assist Iran to acquire everything it needs for a modern nuclear power industry, including technological and financial assistance, legally binding fuel supply guarantees and cooperation on radioactive waste.
It also includes an offer from all E3+3 foreign ministers - which includes the United States - to sit down and talk if Iran suspends its nuclear enrichment activities. And it covers a long list of other potential benefits, from greatly improved political contacts and cooperation to steps towards normalizing trade, economic and energy relations, and agricultural, aviation and development assistance.

Objectively, this is a good offer. Hard to improve on. Lacks only one little detail--

Nuclear weapons.

And, get a grip on this: Nuclear weapons are what the Iranian regime wants. Period.

It doesn't matter if the economy goes further down the tubes. If more capital flees the Shia Paradise. It doesn't matter if unemployment and its inevitable companion--internal turbulence--continues to climb.

The regime believes that it can buy enough time to get the Big Bang it so feverishly has worked, schemed and sacrificed to obtain. Buy enough time economically through evading the sanctions. Buy enough time by exploiting the cash flow from not only oil but the remittances of expat workers and Iranian owned companies. Oliver Gutta gives a very good assessment of this in http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/06/23/_irans_ability_to_avoid_sanctions/6180/.

Internally, the regime is relying on its security forces to keep enough of a lid on the internal dissent to maintain stability. True, the local cops may ignore crime as illustrated in this piece( http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/06/23/iran_revealed_tehrans_taxi_driver_bandits/9755/
But, the ever vigilant eye of the state won't overlook a woman wearing Western clothing or a man with a "Western" haircut (whatever that means.) There are more than a few stories on this, one will do. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/16/mideast/16dresscode.php.

By focusing on these so called "Western" subversions, the regime can accomplish a pair of linked goals. Provide an out-group suitable for public hating (a favorite of all autocratic regimes under threat.) Reinforce the notion that Iran is surrounded and constantly under threat. (So quit your unpatriotic bitching about unavailable/unaffordable food or insufficient pay or no job in sight.)

At the same time the regime hopes to buy time internationally by using the time honored techniques of taqiyya. The mullahocracy did not reject the P5+1 offer--exactly. Neither did they accept it.

They used a variation of Trotsky's approach to the Germans during the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution--neither peace nor war. No treaty but no fighting.

The Tehran regime assured the world that it would respond to the offer in the fullness of time. The regime allowed as how further discussions might be possible within the context of larger issues such as the absurd package of unlinked items it presented to the EU a few weeks back.

At the same time the mullahs and their talking heads in government stated categorically that ending the enrichment program was unacceptable.

The combination might be just enough artful deception, evasion and deeply shaded truth to give hope to those who want peaceful pastures instead of looming fields of mushroom clouds. A characterisation that fits most of us in the West.

Buy time. If the Iranians can buy a little time, they can hope for a change in US policy. The emergence of a more accommodating American administration. We must remember that in the view from Tehran, the US is the Main Enemy (to use old Soviet terminology.) A less hostile US could well mean that the rest of the P5+1 would be even more irresolute than they have been to date. http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-24/0806241487192839.htm

Buy time. If the Iranians can buy a little more time, they can hope to gain one of the seats on the UN Security Council that is up for a vote in the General Assembly shortly before the US elections. By having a voice on the "inside" the mullahs can reasonably hope to cause a decent case of havoc in the Council.

By time. If the Iranians can buy enough time, they will finish enough of their centrifuge cascade array to actually enrich uranium to the level necessary for a bomb. At that point the mullahs calculate they will effectively neutralise through deterrence any potential existential threat to the country.

Or, perhaps the mullahocracy has more spacious ambitions than merely deterring an existential threat. The world will know the answer to that when--and if--the Iranians crank out sufficient highly enriched uranium or separate and concentrate enough plutonium for a few bombs.

One thing we can be damn sure of though is any protestations of peaceful intent is simply another big dose of taqiyya.